Timeline for Are there any good websites for hosting discussions of mathematical papers?
Current License: CC BY-SA 2.5
61 events
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| Jun 2, 2021 at 18:19 | comment | added | Heavensfall | Actually I don’t think it would attract cranks. Most (all?)Cranks are interested in ‘general’ mathematics or big name conjectures, not any specific paper. | |
| Jun 2, 2021 at 13:39 | answer | added | kerzol | timeline score: 3 | |
| Jun 2, 2021 at 10:07 | comment | added | Martin Sleziak | A recent question which is (to some extent) related: Peer review 2.0. | |
| Apr 10, 2020 at 11:23 | history | edited | Gerry Myerson |
edited tags
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| Apr 10, 2020 at 7:15 | answer | added | Sylvain Ribault | timeline score: 0 | |
| Apr 10, 2020 at 6:20 | history | edited | Martin Sleziak |
added the (online-resources) tag
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| Mar 9, 2019 at 20:45 | comment | added | Josiah Park | Here's a related question: mathoverflow.net/questions/122125/math-annotate-platform. | |
| Aug 24, 2018 at 11:08 | answer | added | Jonas Frede | timeline score: 2 | |
| Aug 23, 2018 at 21:16 | answer | added | mo-user | timeline score: 1 | |
| Dec 18, 2017 at 5:04 | review | Close votes | |||
| Dec 18, 2017 at 9:31 | |||||
| Nov 25, 2017 at 15:14 | review | Close votes | |||
| Nov 26, 2017 at 0:17 | |||||
| Nov 29, 2015 at 10:52 | comment | added | Martin Sleziak | Related discussion on academia.SE: Is there a good site for holding online discussions of scientific papers? | |
| Apr 17, 2015 at 4:45 | history | protected | Lucia | ||
| Aug 25, 2014 at 15:31 | answer | added | soliton | timeline score: 5 | |
| Jun 19, 2013 at 8:43 | answer | added | gowers | timeline score: 21 | |
| Jul 5, 2012 at 13:21 | answer | added | David White | timeline score: 3 | |
| Jul 5, 2012 at 8:44 | answer | added | Alexander Chervov | timeline score: 12 | |
| Jan 13, 2011 at 18:17 | comment | added | Glen M Wilson | As a graduate student still just finding my way around the research community, I think such a forum would be a great way to interact with other people interested in the same material I am in, that I don't readilly get on MO or even at my graduate school. I can imagine that there are lots of advanced undergraduates and graduate students who become interested in a topic, and it turns out that the school that they are at does not have too many people that do research in that field! I was rather alone in my interest in category theory as an undergraduate; this is one reason I joined MO. | |
| Jan 13, 2011 at 14:07 | answer | added | Marius Kempe | timeline score: 5 | |
| Jan 6, 2011 at 8:39 | comment | added | Arend Bayer | I don't understand the strong skepticism, I think such a site would be great! Even if I know everyone in my area it's still good to have a place to ask "Is there a typo in theorem 3.5" and to make a comment "proposition 1.4 part (b) is now generalized in the paper by XYZ". | |
| Jan 6, 2011 at 6:18 | comment | added | Michael Hardy | Thank you, Henry. I've contacted them, telling them of this present discussion and summarizing some of it. | |
| Jan 4, 2011 at 20:03 | comment | added | Henry Cohn | @Michael: You can find out more about who is influential at the arXiv at arxiv.org/help/scientific_ad_board, but I would strongly recommend against trying to make discussion pages part of the actual arXiv. Anybody who wants to try can make their own discussion site, even based on arXiv paper numbers and metadata, and if enough people band together maybe it would catch on, but the arXiv itself should avoid any unnecessary controversy (and I think the discussion here shows that this would be controversial, regardless of whether it would actually turn out to be a good idea). | |
| Jan 4, 2011 at 18:26 | comment | added | Yemon Choi | @Michael: I would imagine that people who are not in Andy's subarea but are interested in his paper & have comments/questions would discuss it with someone in their physical vicinity, or email their supervisor, or ask their colleagues, or email Andy. I don't see why wider conversation (as opposed to crowdsourcing for particular solutions, which is what I see MO's metier as) is better than personal(ized) conversation, mathblogs notwithstanding. | |
| Jan 4, 2011 at 18:19 | comment | added | Yemon Choi | I don't really want this comment thread to get out of hand, but would like to second Andy Putman's scepticism. I'm also not sure the similarities between such a proposed system and Wikipedia outweigh the differences (different audience; different cultural norms; different concern about signal/noise ratio). I speak as someone who spent an annoying few days arguing on Wikipedia with a grad student who thought he knew the (old) definition of B*-algebra, and had manifestly read less func an. than I had; now multiply this problem up & factor in a large dose of "please explain your paper to me Prof" | |
| Jan 4, 2011 at 17:15 | comment | added | Michael Hardy | This important question now arises: Who among those who run the arXiv should be contacted with a proposal to allow creation of a discussion page for each paper? (I don't actually know who runs the arXiv.) | |
| Jan 4, 2011 at 17:08 | comment | added | Michael Hardy | @Andy: What about those who are not in your little subarea but who might get seduced into it by reading a preprint on the arXiv? Or who might not get seduced into doing research in that area but who might see its connections with some other area that he works in, and acquaint you with those connections for the first time? Wikipedia has always been open to cranks, but that hasn't hurt it much! (Should we distinguish between cranks---those who are "cranky", obsessed with a particular idiosyncratic point of view---and crackpots---those who pontificate from a position of ignorance?) | |
| Jan 4, 2011 at 11:25 | answer | added | osdf | timeline score: 3 | |
| Jan 4, 2011 at 11:08 | answer | added | Marcin Kotowski | timeline score: 11 | |
| Jan 4, 2011 at 10:43 | answer | added | Igor Pak | timeline score: 11 | |
| Jan 4, 2011 at 10:20 | comment | added | Suvrit | I think the best way to find out is to have such a site, with each discussion being "moderated", and with each participant using MO like identities. In thought one can run many experiments, but whether such a discussion site is useful, helpful, meaningful, painful, sustainable, etc. etc., can perhaps be best judged after running it first on a trial basis. Of course, this solution is also junk, because the hard part is setting up such a site in the first place. | |
| Jan 4, 2011 at 9:28 | comment | added | Paul Delhanty | Regarding the cranks problem, such a site could simply import MathOverflow reputation, and also arXiv tag specific reputation. Technically, all one would require to authenticate one as the same user on MathOverflow and the arXiv review site is some sort of cookie on ones MathOverflow profile page. Google does just this sort of thing with its webmaster tools, allowing webmasters to authenticate themselves as the true owners of any given website. | |
| Jan 4, 2011 at 8:39 | answer | added | Andrew Stacey | timeline score: 5 | |
| Jan 4, 2011 at 8:07 | comment | added | Andy Putman | This discussion is getting a little out of hand (there were 4 posts made while I composed my last one!). I think I'll bow out now. | |
| Jan 4, 2011 at 8:05 | comment | added | Andy Putman | @Michael : There are few active people in my little subarea of math that I haven't met (and I've also met a large number of the MO regulars). This isn't exceptional -- math is a small world, and if you regularly attend conferences you'll run into most people. This is why this is different from wikipedia -- the number of people who are qualified to discuss a particular paper is tiny, and they mostly already talk to each other in other ways. Frankly, as M. Greenblatt said below, I'd be loath to post papers to the arXiv if there were some quasiofficial place where cranks could comment on them. | |
| Jan 4, 2011 at 7:58 | comment | added | Michael Hardy | An honorable mention will be awarded to the first person to identify the significance of the date I mentioned above: January 14th, 2001. | |
| Jan 4, 2011 at 7:58 | answer | added | Bruce Westbury | timeline score: 15 | |
| Jan 4, 2011 at 7:53 | comment | added | Michael Hardy | I mean, that's EXACTLY what any reasonable person would have said about Wikipedia before it existed, and very many did! | |
| Jan 4, 2011 at 7:52 | comment | added | Michael Hardy | Andy Putman wrote: "A big problem that I foresee is that such a site would become a magnet for cranks. MO works because of community moderation, but I can't imagine such a thing working on a site like the one you envision." Andy, were you writing about Wikipedia? I suggest that any particular person's inability to imagine something before it's done is of no interest. | |
| Jan 4, 2011 at 7:47 | comment | added | Michael Hardy | @Henry: Look at Wikipedia article discussion pages. Mostly they stay on-topic. Their purpose is not to discuss the topic of the page, i.e. if the article is about John Xmith, the purpose of the article's discussion page is not to discuss John Xmith. Rather, it is to discuss how to edit the Wikipedia article about John Xmith. Maybe they "would" "degenerate very quickly, with discussions going off on lengthy tangents or crossing over between various", but in fact mostly they don't. That rarely if ever happens. | |
| Jan 4, 2011 at 7:42 | comment | added | Michael Hardy | Henry Cohn's point could be address via a mechanism for merging or splitting discussion pages, so that something that begins as a discussion of one paper might become a page for discussion of a specified set of 19 papers. Also, what Henry Cohn (or anyone) would expect should not be taken seriously. What would you expect to happen if an encyclopedia were created by anyone who chose to contribute? On January 14th, 2001, most reasonable people would have said it would be just a bunch of graffiti. You have to judge by the record, not by what reasonable people say "would" (sic) happen. | |
| Jan 4, 2011 at 7:39 | comment | added | Michael Hardy | @Andy: Sorry about the spelling. The number of people wishing to discuss most papers would be zero, I would think. In those cases no discussion page would be created. It's the ones that several people want to discuss that matter. You say most of those people know each other. Do you know most of the people who discuss things with you on MO? People wishing to discuss the same paper who've never heard of each other would communicate on such pages. What would happen with most pages (no discussion) is beside the point. | |
| Jan 4, 2011 at 6:50 | comment | added | Ben Webster♦ | @Henry- You may well be right; there are a whole host of reasons why this is probably a bad idea. I'd still want to know if someone implemented it. | |
| Jan 4, 2011 at 6:14 | answer | added | Theo Johnson-Freyd | timeline score: 16 | |
| Jan 4, 2011 at 5:52 | comment | added | Sean Tilson | I should apologize then Andy, I have been reading "Putnam" in my head every single time. | |
| Jan 4, 2011 at 4:45 | comment | added | Henry Cohn | Maybe I'm atypical, but I don't think organizing discussions by paper would be very useful. There's great demand for a home on the internet for tea-style mathematical discussions (and the demand is not being fully satisfied by blogs), but I don't think there's nearly as much demand for discussion of specific papers. Plus I'd expect a classification by paper to degenerate very quickly, with discussions going off on lengthy tangents or crossing over between various papers. Either you enforce the classification strictly (and upset people) or it will quickly become more or less meaningless. | |
| Jan 4, 2011 at 3:56 | history | reopened |
José Figueroa-O'Farrill Deane Yang Joel David Hamkins Akhil Mathew Ben Webster♦ |
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| Jan 4, 2011 at 3:23 | comment | added | Ben Webster♦ | I've rewritten the question; all comments before this refer to an earlier version. | |
| Jan 4, 2011 at 3:21 | history | edited | Ben Webster♦ | CC BY-SA 2.5 |
rewriting
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| Jan 4, 2011 at 2:21 | comment | added | Vivek Shende | I think Michael's suggestion is fantastic. Someone should create that at once. | |
| Jan 4, 2011 at 1:20 | history | made wiki | Post Made Community Wiki by maxdev | ||
| Jan 4, 2011 at 0:54 | comment | added | Theo Johnson-Freyd | In case there's any further discussion about this question, I've started a meta page tea.mathoverflow.net/discussion/881/… | |
| Jan 3, 2011 at 23:18 | comment | added | Andy Putman | @Kevin : Are there really that many people who have the technical training and inclination to comment intelligently on math papers but who are not part of the "community" of mathematicians? A big problem that I foresee is that such a site would become a magnet for cranks. MO works because of community moderation, but I can't imagine such a thing working on a site like the one you envision. | |
| Jan 3, 2011 at 23:14 | comment | added | Kevin O'Bryant | Such a forum (as Michael suggests) would also serve to collect errata. | |
| Jan 3, 2011 at 23:04 | comment | added | Kevin O'Bryant | @Andy: you make a self-fulfilling prophecy. There are 100s of people who would like to participate (a handful of which are also capable), but they are forever locked out of "the community" because of location, inability to travel, intimidated by BIG NAMES. They can't become part of the community because they aren't already part of the community. | |
| Jan 3, 2011 at 22:54 | comment | added | Andy Putman | By the way, my last name is "Putman", not "Putnam" (grumble grumble grumble)... | |
| Jan 3, 2011 at 22:54 | comment | added | Andy Putman | @Michael : The audience for most papers on the arXiv is quite small (definitely less than 20 people, and probably much smaller than that). Moreover, given the small size of the mathematics community most of those people already know each other and are in contact via email, conferences, etc. I doubt that a website like that would be very useful. If you have a question about a paper, email the author! | |
| Jan 3, 2011 at 22:12 | comment | added | Michael Hardy | Maybe the question is not appropriate for MO, but Andy Putnam's and Yemon Choi's comments don't make sense. Obviously there are innumerable forums for discussion of anything, but if it were universally known that for each arXiv paper there is an accompanying discussion page (which need not exist before someone actually decides the particular paper is worth discussing) then everyone on the planet interested in discussing a particular paper would be gathered together in the same internet forum: that particular paper's discussion page. The department tea room can't do that. | |
| Jan 3, 2011 at 20:54 | history | closed |
Andy Putman Mariano Suárez-Álvarez Yemon Choi José Figueroa-O'Farrill Will Jagy |
off topic | |
| Jan 3, 2011 at 20:30 | comment | added | Yemon Choi | Seconding Andy Putman. I am a bit puzzled as to the thought processes behind the question. One can discuss arXiv papers anywhere one discusses mathematics, and what is more sometimes one can discuss it with people rather than online. (Or you can just email friends and colleagues) | |
| Jan 3, 2011 at 20:21 | comment | added | Andy Putman | The department tearoom, blogs, seminars, conferences, etc. This question is not appropriate for MO and I have voted to close. | |
| Jan 3, 2011 at 20:14 | history | asked | maxdev | CC BY-SA 2.5 |